


Where Do I Begin

by JustLikeAPapercut



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Bad language abounds, F/M, Five Times, alternative universe, fuckknuckle trying to do right, slightly dented people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:54:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26109757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustLikeAPapercut/pseuds/JustLikeAPapercut
Summary: Five times Roman isn't a complete waste of fucking space.
Relationships: Gerri Kellman/Roman "Romulus" Roy
Comments: 21
Kudos: 53





	Where Do I Begin

* * *

_Looking to find a friend, then leave again_ _  
__cutting the wires within, so I'll follow you now_ _  
__where do I begin?_

\- The Joy Formidable, “The Better Me”

* * *

**1.**

Roman’s fresh from losing _The World’s Biggest Turkey_ war when he gets a lead on a prestige production company that’s ripe for the fucking. 

He’s at some lame as fuck party in, like, Calabasas when some coked out asshat plunks down beside him and talks his ear off about his best friend’s production company and how its last film is set to win all these awards, just stupid Tribecca dick-tugging topped off with the normal California bullshit about inclusivity and diversity, which Roman stops listening to about thirty seconds in, pulling out his phone to play a video game. He hates this party and he hates being on the West Coast; everyone here is as full of shit as Roman is, only none of them know it or manage to play it up for laughs. They’re just a bunch of walking Wambsgans zombies in tan Rainbow flip-flops.

He leaves the party a little while later, fights with Grace in the car because she took some kind of designer molly and she’s calling him lame for not being into it, not caring enough to follow her around the party and stay attached to her hip. She goes to bed angry and Roman stays up, fucking around on his phone as he sits on the floor of the suite’s living room, working his way through a six pack of beer and wondering why everything feels so wrong, so stupid, so pointless. 

He’s pretty drunk when he googles the production company the tweeky dickwad was talking about. It seems to have clout, a good reputation behind it, but a few texts to the right people reveal that the guy behind it has been pissing away money too fast, made too many bad coked out decisions. Basically a Kendall without all the Roy money to save things, and he laughs at that, sends a rambling email to films’ legal department that he doesn’t remember in the morning. 

He’s in New York the next week, a tedious family dinner to get through, when his dad brings the acquisition up. 

“You gonna waste my money on some stoner arthouse bullshit?” Logan asks as he cuts into his steak. 

“The last three films grossed well,” Roman shrugs, feeling unsure and nervous now. “The backer is a fucking pansy with shallow pockets and no dick. It’ll be an easy catch and kill.” 

“See that it is,” Logan says, and forks a bit of his meat. Roman glances around the table, sees Kendall look away and Shiv sharing an amused smirk with Baird. 

Fucking Baird, Roman hates that guy. Always with the lame uncle act and the random tortoise stories. Like, who even keeps a tortoise as a pet? A fucking weirdo, that’s who. Fuck him. 

But dinner ends and soon enough he’s back in California, on his way to meet with stuffed shirts in LA. He’s running late for the meeting, but it doesn’t matter anyway. This one is mostly a pro forma fuck you type of thing, and maybe the production company they’re targeting for acquirement will put up a fight but it won’t matter. They don’t have enough money to do so for long. 

Roman’s just outside the meeting room when he hears a woman ask, “does your boss not own a fucking watch?” and oh, how he loves to make a dramatic entrance on cue like that. 

“When you’re as rich as me, you don’t have to,” Roman says as he saunters through the door. “I just buy people and make it their job to tell me the time whenever I fucking call them.” 

The woman, whoever she is, doesn’t bat an eye at that, which only eggs Roman on. The vast majority of people he meets talk shit about him - call him a moron or an asshole behind his back, but everyone who doesn’t share his last name still kisses his ass when they’re still face to face. This chick only stares at him, unblinking, with the faintest trace of disdain and Roman smirks, sits back in a chair and puts his feet on the conference table. 

The meeting is mostly posturing, a circle jerk for all the lawyers. Roman knows they’ll have this sewn up within two months, nothing anyone can do it to stop it, so he spends most of it saying more and more outrageous things, just trying the to get a rise out of the production company’s lead lawyer, but she never gives an inch, even insults him once, after he’s interrupted her three times in a row. 

“I think the secretary out front has some coloring books and crayons,” she says. “If you’d prefer an activity that might hold your attention.” 

He thinks about her voice on the way back to his hotel, even looks her up when he gets curious. _Gerri Kellman_. He wonders if Gerri’s short for something. Maybe he’ll ask her next time, see if he can get her to insult him again. 

He does but she doesn’t, so after the second meeting he has three Shetland ponies dropped off at her house during the day, when she’s bound to be at work. Does Brentwood have an ordinance against ponies? He fucking hopes so. Wants to see her face after they've torn up all her landscaping and shat everywhere. She’s gonna be so fucking pissed, he can’t wait. 

Only, the next time he sees her, she’s the same as the last two times. Snide and dry and mostly unmoving during the meeting, and he feels disappointed but also a little curious. Maybe she just really likes ponies? 

He drinks too much coffee while they’re all in there, so afterward he zips into the men’s room. He’s standing at the urinal, hand braced against the wall when he hears the door swing open. 

“Look here you little prick,” he hears Gerri Kellman say, and he panics, jerks back so suddenly that piss gets all over his hand and then the floor, Roman trying to point his body away from her as she looms behind him. 

“This is the men’s room!” he shouts, trying to shove himself back into his pants. But his hand is soaked with piss and now it’s on his trousers, and he’s panicking for reasons he can’t readily identify. 

“You can waste my professional time all you want,” she tells him as he zips himself up, turning around to her, “but I draw the line at you stalking me at my own home.” 

“What? No! Fuck, no!” He’s shouting, can’t seem to modulate his tone, and he can feel the hatred radiating off her here and for some reason this makes a pit form in stomach, which makes no fucking sense. He’s used to being hated, even by his supposed friends, and she’s not even his friend, she’s opposing counsel for some bullshit production company he just kicked out at their knees. “It was a fucking joke, not a threat.” 

“I’m not laughing,” she says, and she sounds so fucking angry even though she never raises her voice. Like, just clearly thinks he’s the biggest piece of shit. 

“It was a joke,” he whines. “I mean, it was fucking ponies, not a horse’s head. Didn’t your kids like ponies?” 

“I don’t have children, which is something I have never been more grateful for than now, standing here and staring at the multitude of genetic mutations that clearly converged in order to produce _you._ ” 

“Fucking ouch,” he says, moving to the sink and washing his hands, staring at her in the mirror. “Look, this place is going to be sold and mostly dismantled, and everyone except like, umm, maybe four people are going to be out of a job. The way I see it you can take another job doing bullshit like this for some coked out loser who’ll just snort up all your hard work, or you can do something bigger. Better.” 

“Uh uh,” she says, hands on her hips, and Roman’s mind trips over itself, trying to invent something out of thin air. 

“You’re good. Smart. Obviously not rattled by assholes like me who bang pots and swing their little dicks around. You’d do well at Waystar.” 

“You’re dismantling the business I gave the last five years of my life to, and your brilliant idea is to entice me with doing more of the same shit, for an even more clueless boss?” 

“Not me,” Roman says. “Not in films. I mean you’ve done that already, right? And it’s all the fucking same. Bullshit parties in Malibu and talk about cold pressed juice or raw water or whatever the fuck. I mean, look at you, you don’t even have a tan. You must fucking hate it here.” She doesn’t say anything to this, doesn’t confirm or deny, and he takes this as a good sign. “Everyone thinks Waystar is just rollercoasters, cruises, and shitty news, and hey, maybe that’s right. But if you’re going to be cleaning up after entitled pricks, wouldn’t you rather be doing it for money, back in New York?”

She doesn’t say anything still, just stares at him hard for a few seconds and slips out of the men’s room while Roman tries to figure out what he’s going to do about his piss stained pants. A fucking day in the life of Kendall, he guesses. Wonders how fast he can get Frank drunk, convince him to give Gerri Kellman a job. 

. . .

**2.**

Roman gets yanked back to New York and it feels like a blessing couched in a curse. He’s assigned Frank as some useless babysitter, and that fucking rankles. He goes to party after party, night after night, but he doesn’t feel better, doesn’t feel less hollowed out, and he doesn’t even miss Grace once she leaves. 

One of the few nice things about being back in New York is that Gerri is there now, though something always stops him from pestering her much, wasting her time the way he does Baird or Karl. He’s not used to controlling his impulses, let alone wanting to, so he’s not sure why he doesn’t just stroll into her office and tell her to thank him for her lovely view of the city. He thinks maybe, just maybe, it’s better to fly under the radar on this. But he doesn’t know why, not like he has a plan or anything.

Gerri’s been at Waystar for six months when Roman walks into Baird’s office to find Gerri there, papers in her hand, Baird’s hand on her lower back. Roman’s about to make some joke about her fucking her boss when he notices how stiffly she’s standing, like her spine has iced the fuck over, and he knows that’s not the way she holds herself. She usually glides from point to point with an air of calmness and certainty, like she’s never taken a false step or slipped on a patch of ice in her whole goddamn life. 

Roman clears his throat and Gerri jumps, Baird throwing a frown over his shoulder. 

“Careful where you’re putting your hands there, oh godfather of mine. Wouldn’t want my family to lose a piece of our vast fortune to Ms. Kellman here, just because you can’t keep your surprisingly fat sausage fingers to yourself.” He says it with the air of buffoonery people associate with him but holds eye contact as he flops down on Baird’s couch. 

Gerri doesn’t react, doesn’t flinch, but Baird laughs nervously and makes some shitty joke, Roman staring him down the whole time. 

Baird brings up to speed on something, though his answers to Roman’s questions are mostly useless, talking around things like Roman is too stupid to understand, which he is but he also isn’t. Roman floats an idea that Baird just gives a noncommittal answer, useless fuck, and Gerri frowns. 

“What do you think?” Roman asks her.

“I think this would all be easier if you actually read the shit we send you,” Gerri crosses her arms, and Roman smiles. 

“Now if good old Baird ever gave us a straight answer like that, maybe he wouldn’t have been fired nineteen times.”

“Seventeen,” Baird corrects. Because yeah, that’s better. Stupid cuck. 

“My mistake,” Roman says, chin on his hands, and he sees Gerri’s mouth twitch. A fucking score.

Roman didn’t really have anything up his sleeve, he’s never been any good at that shit, but one day at dinner he hears his dad call Baird an overpriced idiot while he’s talking with Marcia, and after that it feels like things just start to line up. 

He’s put on point for dealing with some of the Vaulter acquisition bullshit, is supposed to pass everything onto Baird, but he does so only after a little jiggling and fuckery. He looks up Gerri’s address, dismisses his driver and takes a cab to her building, two days before a meeting with Kendall and his dad. She buzzes him up, opening her door in silk pajamas he’s trying not to stare at, even though he’s most definitely a pervert.

“I thought I made my feelings known regarding your stalker predilections,” she says, but invites him in anyway. 

He hands her the folder he’s holding and then zips right over to the big ass mahogany bar she has in her living room. He picks up a few bottles, just investigating more than anything, before he pours himself some scotch. 

“You came all the way here to bring me documents I already have?” Gerri asks, papers rustling as he downs his drink.

“No one in Legal has those,” Roman says, and pours himself another. “They only have versions of them that a certain fuckup son might have, oh, toyed with here and there.” He turns around and she’s staring at him the way she did a year ago, in that men’s room, his own urine all over his shoes because she caught him off guard.

She joins him at the bar and he pours her a glass of the same scotch while she goes back through some of the documents, frowning in places, probably working out the puzzle. 

“Your boss is about to publicly shit his pants,” Roman pitches his voice for comedic effect. “I wonder who in that meeting will possibly come to the rescue.” 

“I could just be a good little soldier here,” she points out, sipping her drink. “Tell him I discovered a series of errors that the most feckless Roy child passed on while he was too drunk or high to function. Get a gold star from my boss.”

“You could,” Roman nods. Smirks a little, because he cannot imagine her doing so, not when she smells blood in the water. “And as to the most feckless, you should maybe wait to pass out that award until you’ve spent an hour with Connor.”

“Oh, the five minutes I passed him were already quite enough,” Gerri sighs, and Roman giggles. Nobody else talks shit about his family because they’re all too scared. Hearing her waspishly dismiss his brother makes him fucking giddy. 

“Just wait until Kendall goes on a bender or you have to get him out of some bullshit shoplifting charge for a ten dollar pack of cigarettes.”

“Not even one of you turned out fucking normal,” she shakes her head. “How is that?” She isn’t really asking him, and anyway he has no idea. He’s spent his whole life being as weird and repellent as possible because he knows normal would be unattainable, might as well aim his cock the other way. “What do you get out of this anyway?” 

He tops off her drink and then watches as she settles on the couch. Her legs are shorter than his and she tucks them under herself, settles in like he isn’t there and she’s about to watch some television, maybe the news, and the sight of her like this makes something flip flop in his stomach. 

“Uh,” he says, and tries to find a joke. But there isn’t one, it’s just him, a little buzzed, standing in front of her. “I guess someone who’ll be honest with me? Like, not pull the placating crap people do with Kendall, or the way they dance around my dad.”

“Frank’s honest with you,” Gerri says, squinting, and Roman throws himself down on the couch with a groan. 

“Frank is halfway up my dad’s dick at all times, even when he’s being fucked over by him. Plus he treats me like an idiot.”

“Well, you act like an idiot.”

“And yet I was smart enough to bring you into the fold.” She doesn’t have a retort to that, which he counts as a win. “Look, I like you and I fucking hate Baird. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up with your little Lady Macbeth screwdriver in my back too. But at least you’ll tell me when my ideas are good and when I should go flush my head in a toilet.”

She kicks him out not long after that. But two days later, Baird is caught flat footed in front of Logan, Kendall looking on in confusion, Roman watching Gerri as she sits there, feigning concern while Baird flails around. 

“Blink twice if you’re having a stroke,” Roman tosses out at Baird, which earns him a shouting down from his dad. But then Gerri interjects, offering a way forward, Logan calming down to a low, steady grumble that still makes Roman’s hands sweat. 

Baird is gone five days later, Gerri gets a promotion. Everyone thinks Frank has a hand in it, Logan has asked if he’s fucking her, probably puts ratfucker Sam on it to crawl through Frank’s phone history, but that’s fine, good even. 

He waits three days before he pops into a florist. Pays cash for flowers that he has sent to Gerri’s apartment. 

. . .

**3.**

He thinks maybe he’s made a mess of things with that whole phone call shit. 

Like, she sounded like she was into it? But she was probably just placating him and when he goes back, when he sees her, it’s going to be as shitty and weird as the rest of his life. 

Fuck him, he’s an idiot. No wonder his dad doesn’t fucking respect him. 

He’s back in New York maybe two days before Gerri pops into his office. “I heard you were back, but I assumed that reports of your return were false, as I’ve yet to waste my day cleaning up something you’ve fucked up.” She’s standing in his doorway and she’s wearing blue, her hair pinned up like back in California, when she hated him on principle and he had nothing to offer her but a life raft off the ship he’d personally torpedoed. 

He wants… he isn’t sure what he wants? To touch her maybe. Jack off to her again for sure, but not just that. It feels like when he was a kid and he had a crush on the neighbor in the Hamptons, and everyday they’d race to the swings, screaming at the top of their lungs. 

He just wants to take Gerri’s hand and run down the street with her, screaming and giggling. 

“I’ve mostly been sleeping at my desk,” Roman says, striving for something light and stupid. “I’ll think about putting in a day’s work next week, maybe the week after.”

“You do that,” she says, her voice cutting, but she’s smiling before she turns on her heel to leave and something warm pools in Roman’s stomach. 

Tern Haven is weird and claustrophobic, and everywhere he goes, that fucking hairless cat follows him, pawing at his leg like something out of the shitty horror movies he used to green light while he was drunk. 

“For Christ’s sake,” he hears Gerri mutter before dinner, when the cat attaches itself to her leg. Roman bites down on his lip and feels a little bit better about life, a tad less alone. 

He’s full of piss and vinegar after dinner, and he tops that off with half a bottle of bourbon. It occurs to him that it would be really funny if he found that fucking cat and put it in Gerri’s room. 

He’s halfway asleep when he hears the knock. He’s not really drunk anymore, just tired and disoriented, so when he opens the door in his underwear and she barrels in, it takes him a second to remember what he did. But then she hits him in the arm and he starts laughing, like really laughing, and that only makes her madder. 

“I was almost asleep when that fucking thing rubbed against my face. What did Tom call it?”

“Fucking penis cat,” Roman doubles over, laughing so hard he can’t breathe.

“You’re a cunt and I hate you,” she tells him, but she’s laughing too now, trying to hide it.

“Would the lady have preferred a Shetland pony again?”

“Laugh all you want, you degenerate, but those things ate up all my goddamn jasmine and then shat it out everywhere. I’m still mad at you for that.”

“Are you really?” he says, and grabs her hands here. “Still cursing the most feckless of the Roy children?”

“All the time,” she deadpans, clearly about to say something else when he kisses her.

“Shit, sorry,” he says, pulling away. “Fuck, I’m as bad as creepy ass Baird. Shit.”

Her eyes are wide now, probably freaked the fuck out because Roman is an idiot, and he’s moving away, trying to put space between them so she’ll feel safe when she pushes up on her toes and kisses him. 

“This is a horrible idea,” she says, when they pull apart again, but he already has his hand up her pajama top and she apparently isn’t wearing a bra, and he’d sooner cut his arm off then give up the feeling of her breast fitting into his hand. 

“Spectacularly stupid,” he agrees, but it’s mostly breath against her ear and then he’s kissing her neck. 

He knows if they have sex that he’ll only disappoint her, that this will never happen again, so when they eventually make it to the bed he kneels down between her legs, licks his way up her thighs. 

“Roman,” she pleads, because they’ve been kissing forever already, his dick leaking an ocean into his boxers, and he’s so hard and so desperate that even a breeze blowing against his cock will make him go off.

He doesn’t take his time or start out gently once her panties her off. He just sucks her right into his mouth, hears her gasp and then feels her pull his hair a moment later, when he’s licking her clit for all he’s worth. 

“Oh, fuck. Rome.” She’s called him that twice before but now it’s a low moan with her trembling legs wrapped around his head, gripping tighter every time he swirls his tongue around her, and he knows this is all he’ll think about now when he hears that nickname. The taste of her on his tongue, her nails in his hair, one of her feet pressing into his back. 

He isn’t sure when she comes, only that too soon she’s pushing his head away, telling him no more. This is the part with women where he normally leaves, gets himself off alone because that’s easier, less embarrassing, but they’re in his room and it feels wrong to go to the bathroom, to not touch her stomach, her chest, the inside of her wrists while he has the chance. 

“Roman,” she says, while he’s tracing her hipbone with his tongue, and he ignores her. “ _Roman_.”

She proves stronger than she looks when she pushes him onto his back and flips on top of him. 

“I won’t last,” he says, “you feel too good.” But she just kisses him, her tongue in his mouth when she slides down on him, her hands bracketing his face. 

He lasts maybe a minute, a fucking miracle given that she was clenching around him the whole time, telling him that this is horrible, sick, wrong. 

He wants to make a joke after it’s over, something stupid and thoughtless about getting married or kidnapping her, but he stops himself. Pulls her flush to his chest and says, “I will want to do that again, very soon.”

. . .

**4.**

Gerri brings him into the loop on how bad the cruises stuff is, how dirty her hands are, a month after they start having sex.

All of the NDA’s, the horrible shit, that was under Baird, but she’s the center of the shitshow circus now, and he realizes that she’s telling him because she’s scared. She isn’t a Roy, she hasn’t known the family for years the way Frank has. She’ll make the perfect patsy if this all goes further sideways, and Roman wonders now if that’s why Logan was so quick to promote her. 

“How do I make this better?” he asks helplessly, and Gerri only shrugs, downs her martini. 

“Keep your eyes and ears open,” she says. “Be careful not to tip our hand about this.” She gestures between them, and Roman hates this. Hates that he can’t fucking sit next to her in meetings or go out with her to restaurants. 

He always recoiled from all that hand-holdy shit and now that he wants it, he can’t fucking have it. 

“If this goes south, we should get married,” he says, and she rolls her eyes, sits down heavily on his couch. “I’m not fucking kidding! I’m being serious.”

“I know,” she sighs, sounding resigned and annoyed. “That’s what scares me.”

“I want to protect you.”

“He’s your father. You can’t… Roman, I would never expect you to abandon your family.”

Because he has so many good memories of them? Of getting hit across the face, lying about bruises? The horrors of that fucking military school? 

“I want to protect you,” he repeats, and sits down beside her.

“I don’t think you can,” she shakes her head. Pats him on the leg like he’s a child, some dumb kid who just told her about his imaginary friend. 

For a while it looks like all the momentum is building behind the idea of hanging Baird out to dry, but then that fucking piece of shit goes and has a massive coronary, right before the congressional hearings. 

“If he dies, I’m going to piss in his coffin,” Roman says to Gerri on the phone. It’s morning in Turkey and she’s in bed, her laptop probably beside her, and he can hear the sound of the duvet shifting as they talk. 

“A lovely image,” she drawls, but he knows she’s still amused. She’s not as good at hiding it as she used to be. 

“You feeling okay about this?” he asks her, sipping his first cup of coffee. 

“I feel sick to my stomach every time I think about it,” she admits. “But there’s nothing to do but go out there and let your brother-in-law humiliate himself. Hope he draws all the fire.”

“Shouldn’t be hard,” Roman snorts. But then Jamie and Karl are coming his way and he has to sign off in a hurry. “Gotta go, love you.”

He says it without thinking, without fucking meaning to, and the whole time Jamie is talking to him he’s distracted, fucking panicking, because Gerri gets as spooked as he does about shit like that and she’s probably changing her locks right now, while Roman is stuck here, listening to his dad’s minions tell him shit he already knows. 

They don’t get killed in Turkey, which is cool, but there’s a solid hour where Roman thinks it’s a possibility and he’s like, kind of relieved he said that thing to Gerri. Because he does. He really fucking does, and she’s the one thing in his life that doesn’t feel like a meaningless, pointless parade of nothing. 

Everyone makes shitty jokes when he gets to the boat, even Gerri. And he knows she’s just playing a part, he knows she is, but he’s twitchy and tired and they never talked about that thing he said and he hopes she doesn’t bring it up now. 

He avoids his room as much as he can, lounges around the pool for hours because he needs to tell his dad that the money is bullshit, but doing so means someone’s getting hung out to dry and that someone’s probably still going to be Gerri. 

“Dude, are you okay?” Kendall asks him, when Roman is just spacing out. 

“You ever just feel like this is all bullshit?” Roman asks him. “Like this family shit is just a bunch of gaslighting, Christmas and Thanksgiving and every shitty holiday where we’ve ever been miserable, just leading up to this?”

“Uh, yeah,” Kendall says slowly. “Yeah, I do.” 

“Where’s Naomi?”

“Dad had me send her away.” Kendall's voice cracks on the last word but when Roman looks over his brother looks fine, like he just imagined it, too much booze and sun playing tricks on him. 

“Hey, has dad ever said anything about Gerri?” Roman asks. It’s a leading question, one that Gerri would hate, tipping their hand and whatever, but he needs to know. 

“Uh, right before you got here, we were talking and he called her a clever little bitch.”

“Did he now,” Roman says. 

It’s the kind of thing he’d call Gerri himself when they’re in bed, wrestling over the TV remote, but he knows the way his father means things like that and something in him goes cold here. 

He tells his father to take the money. Says it with casual confidence, knowing it’ll blow up in their faces. But maybe he and Gerri won’t even be here by then, maybe they’ll turn whistleblower or some shit, he doesn’t know. But he does know that something threadbare has finally torn loose inside of him because when he looks at Logan now, all he thinks about is smothering him with a fucking pillow in his sleep. 

He goes to Gerri’s room because he’s basically avoided her so far and he needs her smarter, quicker brain to hatch their plan. He only knocks once before she’s opening the door, barely closes it behind him when she’s kissing him, her hands fisted into his shirt. 

“You’re a reckless fucking idiot,” she tells him, already pulling down his shorts. 

“I think I just sold my whole family down the river, in order to buy us some time.” 

“What?” she asks, but he’s kissing her again and pushing her toward the bed, her dress abandoned on the floor.

“I love you,” he says. “I really do love you.”

She starts to say something when he pushes into her, the word turning into a gasp, her hands on his neck, her legs wrapped around him. 

. . .

**5.**

“That’s a really fucking stupid idea,” Kendall says. “Gerri, tell him.”

“That’s a fucking stupid idea, Roman.”

“See,” Kendall says. “Gerri agrees.”

“This is bullshit,” Roman complains. “And besides, Ken doesn’t have anything better.”

“How did he even trick you into dating him?” Kendall asks Gerri. “He’s a moron. What did he do, blackmail you?”

“I may or may not have evidence regarding a number of unsolved murders in her old neighborhood,” Roman says, shoving a muffin into his mouth, and he hears his brother snort at the same time that Gerri sighs. 

They’re in Kendall’s office - their dad’s old office - and it’s weird to be in here and not feel like a knot of anxiety, a fucking neurotic mess. Maybe it just doesn’t feel like him anymore since Kendall redecorated everything? Probably helps too that he boned Gerri on Ken’s desk last week.

The lawsuits are still going on, their father is still out there, swimming around them like some fucking fatally wounded shark, and they’re gearing up for another round of congressional hearings, but they’re still surviving, still fighting on, and Roman thinks maybe it won’t all go to shit. 

“Are we gonna do Christmas with Shiv and Tom?” Kendall asks him now, before everyone files in for a meeting. 

Roman just looks at Gerri, can feel her frustration bubbling up that he's making her be the bad guy. 

“We’re going to Barbados,” she says and sounds apologetic. Which is total bullshit, since she's the one who refused to do another wacko Roy holiday round up, but whatever, that’s fine.

“Nice,” Kendall says, kicking at Roman’s chair. “Leave me and Naomi alone to chat up Wambsgans while you go frolic with general counsel.”

“Sorry not sorry, fuckstick,” Roman says. He does actually fit a little bit guilty, but not enough to turn down having sex with Gerri for a week straight, no interruptions but food and sleep. 

They work late into the night just like the last dozen nights, and sometime before midnight, he slides into the car next to Gerri. He never sleeps at his own place anymore, but Gerri won’t let him sell it. Which is fine. It doesn’t really matter either way. 

“Did you even eat dinner?” Roman asks her, watches as she thinks.

“Umm, I had the granola bar that’s been in my purse for two weeks. Does that count?”

“No,” he laughs. He thinks about trying to get her to eat something now, but she won’t, not this late. 

He knows her now. Really knows her. Can tell when she wakes up cranky and is going to be terse all day; accepts that she seems to like, fucking collect scarves and shawls, even though she doesn’t wear two-thirds of the ones she owns. He thinks about the time she told him that she got engaged when she was thirty-one and the very night after that asshole popped the question, she walked in to find him with another woman. “I don’t know,” she’d shrugged at the time, like it didn’t bother her anymore. “Maybe marriage just ruins things.” He’s tried to be a little less of a selfish prick since then, though he never brings that conversation up again. 

They shower in different bathrooms and then meet back up in the bedroom, pajamas on, laptops on laps. 

“I have a hard time believing that some of this congressional bullshit isn’t your sister’s doing,” Gerri mutters.

“No doubt about it,” Roman agrees. 

Shiv didn’t do much to help their dad in the end, but she was still pissed that he and Ken left her out of their plan to stab Logan in the ribs. Roman gets it, he’d feel hurt too, but who knows whether she would have gone tattling to daddy and there was no way they were going to trust that shit stain she married. They kept Tom and his butt ass ugly suits out of jail, that should be enough proof of their love. 

At some point they really have to sleep, the alarm will go off in less than five hours and they’ll do it all again. 

“Oh Rome, I’m so tired,” Gerri sighs, when he kisses across her shoulder.

“I know,” he says into her neck. “Just this.”

“Feels nice,” she says, melting into him. 

He gets a hard on because he's exhausted, not dead, but he angles his groin away from her. Just presses kisses into her hair and across her neck until she falls asleep, her arm heavy and warm across him.

. . . 

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to haunt me on Tumblr (@thiswillonlyhurtalittle) or Twitter (@tribblekeeper)


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